Monday, July 25, 2005

Breathe

I've told you this before, but let me say it again: I think in pictures. I wonder what it would be like if I lost my sight. Have I stored up enough visions in my short twenty-six years in order to continue thinking in pictures? Could I ever store up enough images, soak in enough beauty and splendor from the world around me?

Perhaps the movie-screen of my mind would become more Wonka-esque. In the absence of reinforced visual reality, maybe my imagination would finally be free to wander into other worlds and dreams. Greens might thrive more vividly and blues might swirl into greys and purples and blacks until they merged, finally and indefinitely as one.

I like to imagine even the most ordinary, mundane tasks as pictures. Breathing, for instance. I like to close my eyes and take deep breathes, imagining the air flooding into my lungs as water released through a valve. It plunges in a sense, my breath. As I inhale, air swirls down my windpipe, plunges into my lungs, pooling for a moment in an oxygen eddy before the next batch of fresh air moves in, displacing the old.

Unfortunately, however, that sensation occurs mostly on good days. Then there are days like today. Today my breath stops short, just before reaching my clavicles, and turns around immediately. Days like this I tend to constantly yawn. Days like this, I wish I could go back to bed and not deal with any pictures or words or any form of cognizance, really.